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I've been in quite a few crack houses (hence the name) with varying levels of nasty shit, but my favorite had pretty much all the components of grimy-ass nastiness.

It had an open kitchen / "dining room" with a kerosene heater in the middle and large piles of dog shit all over the floor. There was what I imagine used to be an overflowing trash can that had devolved into a massive, vermin-chewed garbage pile; this was next to a counter covered in dirty dishes and lots of food that looked like someone lost interest after a few bites.

There was a short hallway with a fucking annihilated bathroom and a bedroom filled with a pile of un-pawnable shit. There was also a pile of electrical insulation, apparently left from wire stripped out of the house.

I guess the bedroom got filled before the situation really spun out of control, because the living room had been converted into a makeshift 3-bay whorehouse. There were some nightmarish mattresses in the floor, separated by bed sheets nailed to the ceiling. The sheets seemed worthless as privacy, as they didn't even come close to the floor.

At the other end there was a combo VHS / TV playing some pre-pubic-grooming porno; the TV was powered by an extension cord, apparently because the wiring had been ripped out of the living room as well. This stood out, since I remember wondering if the copper in an extension cord was worth less than in-wall electrical wiring.

Of course there was the standard crack house smell, which always makes me picture a dead cat in old gym socks shitting on a pile of wet pennies.

edit: I forgot to mention that there were kitchen knives jammed in between the trim / wall under some of the windows throughout the house, except in the living room, which had a rusty machete.

Former LEO here. I can concur. I was once called to a house by a mother of two kids. They lived in a pretty shitty neighborhood. (please be aware this was in North east Virginia, towards Washington DC.) The kids had been riding by an abandoned house, that sometimes contained squatters. We would usually scream Police, then let the drug sniffing dog (not the same as the ones that rip your arms off. These dogs we take to schools, they are awesome, not angry or mean). The squatters would see the "Police Dog" come in, and just run off. All she wanted to do was play :). Please read, this is Fairfax County va, nothing bad (compared to like, eh detroit, or our nothern friend baltimore) happens. So we get there, and I talk to the mother. She was a nurse, and told me, she walked by this abandoned house, and smelt what she thought was decaying. Cool, the plot thickens.

So at this point, I call a buddy of mine, and we show up at this house. Read: everything crackhead medic said, Minus the whore house, but just as fucked up. I remember ruining a pair of Kevlar gloves, because I touched the wall, and it was sticky with what I can only assume to be Tobacco tar? Anyway, I get there, and we come up to the house, I'm walking up the steps, but in the event someone has purchased this POS to tear it down, I'm not about to violate the 4th. And it hits me. The stench of a thousand dead roadside deer.

Now good news everyone, a smell I can confidently articulate smells like what I know to smell like dead body, is enough PC to enter this dwelling. So My buddy and I start to enter this place. I have only been doing this 5-8 months at this point (by myself already spent time with FTO, and academy) I am sorely unprepared for what's to meet us inside

Warning: Gore in text

I enter this house, calling out that we are police and need to make contact with anyone in this household. The kitchen, oh my god the kitchen. There were probably around 10-15 bags, that hold like a good 200 paper plates, then all the paper plates, piled up in the kitchen, easily over 1000 soiled stinking ass dirty plates. Not to mention, the smell was literally THICK, the air seemed thicker than normal.

The bathroom, didn't have a toilet anymore, someone had ripped it out, I assume when the water got turned off, who knows. and people had been using the hole in the floor, to shit in out onto the ground (Though someone showed at least some innitiative here, they had dug a latrine hole.) The bathroom had some empty bottles of Psuedoephedrine (read sudafed, mucinex, one of those).

Now, here's where I lost it. We noticed that as we ventured closer to the back of the house, a huge amount of those gnarly black house flies were EVERYWHERE. I turned the hall to the bedroom, and there was a woman, who couldn't have been maybe more than 25-30. (Turned out to be 29 based on ID) She was dead. She had been dead, in the same spot, exposed to most of the elements for quite a while (I never followed up on the details, cause a lot of the time, you can't get personal with these people, it will literally cause you to screw up bad). The part that really hit home about the whole thing, was that she had been pregnant when she died, and the baby had come out. Wasn't alive, but just seeing such a tragic thing. Crack Dens and shit, are the fucking worst.

If anyone wonders, I left the LE community because I felt like I wasn't assisting in the problem. I didn't know how to, but I knew that I had been forced to take actions against the public, that I believed violated their constitutional rights, my only way to fight back, was to quit.

TL;DR: Once a cop, called to a "crack house" found dead baby and mother.

Edit: No details here, I never checked to see if it was a closed case or not, I assume so because the detectives never got back in touch with us, after handoff. But I don't want to divulge too many details so if you ask a question, if I am vague. please don't assume I'm being an asshole.

Oh man...I've spent most of my life around different parts of NOVA. It's crazy to think of something like that in Fairfax of all places! It's all soccer moms and mini vans! Sounds more cut out for PWC. Crazy though.

I had a dealer that lived in an abandoned Créche. The place still had children's finger paintings on the wall. Blood all over the walls of the lavatory from a few different junkies. I lived there for a week and that's what stopped me doing coke. The dude was cool but there were too many people trying to fuck him over. He kept me fed, kept me high while I had no money and never asked for the money back. He called me everyday, when I was kicking the coke, to check on me and make sure I was doing OK. He even refused to sell me anything when I was giving up, even when I begged him. I got out, he didn't. I miss that dude.

Yup, I'll be forever grateful for what he did for me. Atleast I didn't fall out with him when he was doing what was best for my own self interest. I remember him saying ''You can tell me to go fuck myself, that you hate me but I'm still going to call you tomorrow''. I'm no religious man, but he was the closest thing to a saint that I knew or ever will know. Troubled, yes, but a heart of gold nonetheless.

Awwww I'm sorry. I try to look at the positives, I gained a great friend (Even though I did eventually lose him to drugs) and I got clean. All I do now is smoke weed and have the occasional glass of whiskey. Psychedelics twice a year and E once a year. He made me a much better person, probably because he couldn't do it for himself.

I'm happy for you that someone like that was in your life. It seems like you went through rough patch and he carried you part of the way. Now I'm not really a religious person, but I sure hope there is a happy place reserved for him in the afterlife.

That's beautiful. It's stories like these that remind me why I do drugs.

I did the 12 step program for a few years and found myself to be not an alcoholic, though I do have an on/off thing with stimulants. I've found myself hanging out with the club kids around here recently, and some of them break my heart with the problems they develop.

When I see these kids my age who can't handle themselves, or they're asking for help in one way or another; I try to direct them and tell them where the help they need is. I'm not an alcoholic, I can't help them get sober; but I can tell them the phone number to call.

In a shooting gallery that was in Chicago. It was in an abandoned hotel with a beautiful layout and a chandelier. But aside from that it was absolutely disgusting. The entire floor was literally carpeted with syringes, spoons, empty bags, liquor bottles, and water bottles. Honestly, there was a path that you followed through this sea of junkie filth. There were random couches and cushions with people passed out on them and dead animals everywhere. In the main bathroom there was a toilet with a fucking pile of shit and rigs coming over the top of it by about 8 inches with puke all over and blood stains squirted on the walls. Somebody graffiti'd "welcome to our heaven" on the wall.

It was the most disgusting place i've ever witnessed, yet i went to this place 4-6 times a day for 2 years....im glad im done with that lifestyle and out of places like that.

So this rich kid's parents bought a farmhouse down in FL to build a mansion on. But for the longest time it was just a super huge lot with a tiny house in the back, and he'd hang there with his friends, let people have the house for a drug binge weekend, whatever.

So we drive to this place with some friends when i first started smoking weed, for a night of lines of molly and some other shit. After 45min driving we find this middle-of-nowhere driveway into a huge lot, and then drive a few minutes on that in pitch black darkness, seeing a faint light in the distance. When we pull up to the house, it had 2 AC room units hanging off the sides and the entire thing just looked like it was falling apart. It had a 'garage' barn area full of old shit, the size of a small walmart, probably over 100 years old. The amount of rust and number of spiders and other creatures in it was mindblowing- we never really went there. But we walk inside the house and...

Every wall was covered with ...artifacts. Artwork, printouts from the college trash cans, posters, paintings, thrift shop clothes, preserved bugs, framed documents, signs from the road, every surface covered in it. The cupboards in the kitchen are shelfless and bust open, and the netire counter and fridge are covered with empty liquor bottles. The filth was disgusting. There were sheets hanging as doors between each space, and the living room, with 6 couches and a huge flat screen tv, had at least 10 different rugs on the floor with all sorts of different textures and things. There was one light in every room, a hanging bulb really, and christmas lights criss-crossed all throughout the ceilings, part of the living room's ceiling was completely covered in tin foil. There were blacklights and neon paint covered the little space on the walls that didn't have artwork on them. There was a center table where all the drugs were - all sorts of bongs and smoking paraphernalia, a mirror and some razor blades and tissues, and a scale. The sound system was the shit, and we didnt have internet or cable but we hooked up a dvd player or ipod to it and just had the best nights there. We had powder charcoal fights and tripped our asses off, putting plastic forks into each other's hairs, getting down to our underwear (there was like a consistent 15 of us that went to that house), making art, blowing shit up in the yard, smoking packs and packs of cigarettes....

But then when the night was over, it was scary shit. There were full on palm sized spiders, black widows i'm sure, crawling all over the walls. Cockroaches, bugs, whatever got in from the farm. It was hot and it smelled like all sorts of creatures in there, and the water wasn't safe to drink, no food or stores nearby.

But after tripping out with the spiders trying to fall asleep out of your mind cramped into a couch with 3 other drugged up friends and some blanket htat's probably been to too many places, it was good. We woke up, drank beers (since the water wasn't safe to drink), and smoked a joint by the lake hearing the birds chirp. There were no curtains or very good windows, so the entire house glowed and the fields went on and on, it was really pretty.

Good times.

edit: I might actually have pictures of it. I'll scavenge through my things when I get home to see if I can find any.

I used to go to a meth house for their really good weed (I assumed used to come down from meth). It was a shit hole. Clothes everywhere, a weight set in the middle of the bed room, a fucked up aquarium, and two twin pitbulls used as guard dogs. On one occasion I was over there smoking and drinking, and I saw them give one of the dogs meth. First through the nose, then under the tongue, then finally he took a big meth hit and blew it into a bag, which he forced the smoke from into the dog's mouth. The dog was up for 2 days. Meth heads are the worst kind of addicts. They are unpredictable, random, scary, and paranoid. That being said I really feel sorry for them.

I've seen some shitty, shitty heroin addicts. I guess they do shitty things because they need the dope to feel 'normal' and not dopesick. I haven't really met any meth heads, I buy it sometimes but I only know one dude who fucks with it and never chill with him.

The most fucked up shit I have ever seen in my entire life was a family of four or five living in a Budget Suites motel. One of the children was in their teens, I assume, and was mentally retarded. Like, cannot function in the real world and needs constant care. Well, this lovely family of meth addicts found an easy way to deal with someone who needs constant care. Strap her to a fucking chair and put her in another room alone. I could tell she was being neglected because of how horribly thin and feeble she was. Think WWII concentration camp Jew. Almost that bad. She smelled too which told me they didn't bathe her. Pretty sure she wore diapers too and I'd bet money they left that shit on her for a while before changing her.

I went to that motel a couple times to get dope. Once I saw the girl strapped into the chair making all sorts of noise. I'm sure she wanted to be untied. The look in her eyes... Another time she was free to roam the motel room and she came right at me and gave me a hug. Oh god, the smell.

No, but the only thing good that could have possibly happened is the girl got put into a hospital of some sort. I understand state hospitals or mental hospitals in general might not be the prettiest of places, but I'm sure it's better than living in a fucking motel with a bunch of junkies and hardly ever getting to see the light of day if at all.

Mom and dad were meth heads. Two daughters were meth heads. One of them I know was smoking dope while pregnant. The son was maybe around 30 years old and had spent more of his life in jail than out of it. Pretty sure he's serving serious time for burning down an apartment building resulting in the death of at least one individual. I actually found a bit about what happened. I met the guy a couple times.

Now that I think about it that makes six family members that lived in a one bedroom motel.

One of the children was in their teens, I assume, and was mentally retarded. Like, cannot function in the real world and needs constant care. Well, this lovely family of meth addicts found an easy way to deal with someone who needs constant care. Strap her to a fucking chair and put her in another room alone.

I was once a homeless traveling kid. I was in Philly and had nowhere to stay. I got hipped to this 8 story abandoned apartment building where people were living in the top floor. There was layer of broken glass on the floor and punk rockers strung out on heroin everywhere, it smelled like piss and shit. pretty much what you might expect. I could elaborate if you'd like.
EDIT: so here's a paper I wrote in college about this time in my life, there is actually quite a bit more to the story. maybe I'll write a book some day
EDIT 2: I tried to format this and failed, I am sorry :(
EDIT 3: A lot of people are asking me about money. I took about $200 with me, but ended up only spending about half of that in 3 months. I shoplifted a lot (and am now 'banned' from whole foods) and ate garbage most of the time. I did some creative things like doing backflips for $5 or playing music on the street. Also, people tend to take pity on a young kid like I was.

When I was nineteen years old, I decided that my young life needed some adventure. I was, at the time, living in Raleigh, North Carolina in a dirty two-bedroom house with a fluctuating number of room mates; usually nine or ten of them. We would host punk shows and anarchist book readings, dance parties and the occasional vagabond sleepover. On these occasions I would listen with intense jealousy to kids talk about life on the road. I always thought that some day I’d just run away with them, and I was right. In the summer of 2006 I set off on my journey from Raleigh up through Virginia to Pennsylvania, but this was no Greyhound road trip.
One of my good friends had hitchhiked before, so we had someone drive us to the border of North Carolina and Virginia and hitched the short ride up to Richmond. It was great. We met weirdos and concerned mothers who gave us rides because if it had been their children on the side of the road, they’d want someone to give them a ride. More commonly, got rides from zealots trying to convince us to turn our lives around and go with god. Once we were in Richmond, we knew a couple people and crashed on their couches, and discovered a secret tree house by the river that we slept in one night. Richmond was a party city, and at the time had the second or third highest murder rate per capita. One night we were walking through a neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. A group of young kids started following us. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it didn’t sound welcoming.
“918, bitch!” one of the kids yelled as a cloud of white chemical powder enveloped us. They had sprayed us with a fire extinguisher. We didn’t want trouble and knew we were in the wrong neighborhood, so we just kept walking. I heard footsteps running up behind me again. I turned around.
“All right man, really?” I said indignantly. I saw white again, but this time it was all inside my head. He had clocked me with fire extinguisher. I was disoriented, but my friend put his arm around me.
“Come on, we need to walk,” he said. My senses started to come back and I slowly started to realize what had happened. I was beyond angry, but I knew there was nothing I could do. I could hear them laughing a block away.
Later that night at a party, I was the benefactor of everyone’s sympathy, but we decided it was time to move on from Richmond. We got our stuff together and headed to Washington D.C. the next morning. Luckily we got a ride all the way there and I slept the whole way. Once in D.C. we met up with some friends at a local collective house. We spent the better part of a week helping organize protests for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. We went to the park and fed homeless people and rode bikes late at night. Things were looking up, but my friend decided he wanted to go back down south, and I wasn’t ready for the adventure to end. Standing on the on ramp at eight in the morning, I realized this would be my first time hitching alone. I got a rush of self-important confidence and a beat up green truck skidded to a halt on the side of the ramp.
“Hurry up and get in, I ain’t got a license!”
I laughed and hopped in the truck bed. He didn’t take me too far. I got another couple of rides to right outside of Baltimore. I had heard bad things about Baltimore from traveling kids, and as the hours went by standing on the side of the highway by myself, I started to get a little nervous. What was I even doing out there?
A car pulled over and I had a bad feeling. I had been told by travelers to always trust my instinct about a sketchy ride, but I was desperate.
“Where you headed?” The big fellow behind the wheel of a shiny SUV asked.
“Umm… Philly.” I said with a shaky voice.
“Well, I’m not going that far, but I can take you a few exits.”
I shook my head and got in the car.
“I just need to make a quick stop at my house, it’s the next exit,” he said. I clutched my pocketknife out of his view.
“I’d really rather stay on the highway,” I said defiantly.
“It’ll only take a minute, I swear. You could take a shower if you want.” I didn’t like where this was going, but I was basically trapped. He started to tell me his story. It Turned out he had been in my position when he was younger. He went into his house and I just waited in the car. He came out with two bags of groceries and wore a big goofy smile as he put them on my lap. We went to a drive-through and he bought me a meal. I felt bad for questioning his intentions. When he dropped me off he handed me a $20 bill in addition to all the food.
“I can’t take this, man, you’ve really helped me out,” I said, feeling ashamed.
“Listen man, it’s like a karma thing. Just take it.” He said with confidence. I took it and went on my way. I felt happy, but I was still scared. My confidence was shaken. The next ride I got was from an elementary school teacher who was going all the way to Philly.
“So… why are you doing this?” she said as politely as she could. I stayed quiet, unsure how to answer. “You know, I get it. I really do. I’ve always wanted to do that, I was just too scared.”
We got into the city right when it started to get dark. Perfect timing. I felt lucky, but that feeling quickly faded. I had never been to Philadelphia, and I knew no one. I didn’t know where to go or what to do so I wandered around trying to think of somewhere to sleep. I stashed my pack on a playground and walked until midnight or so. Eventually I just unrolled my sleeping bag at the top of the steps of an official looking building and slept with one eye open.
The next morning I was feeling refreshed, but I was still questioning why I was there. I had heard from some other traveling kids that there was a squat in West Philly called Paradise City. It was legendary. It was an eight floor abandoned apartment building, and the best part: there were cell phone towers on the roof, so the whole place had electricity. When I got to the neighborhood, it looked like a bomb had hit it. There was garbage everywhere, people slinging dope on the corner, pretty much every ghetto stereotype. I asked around and found some punk rockers who were willing to show me how to get in. They told me it was dangerous, but I was feeling invincible.
All of the doors and windows were boarded up, and the building was covered in graffiti. They took me around the back through a hole in the chain link fence under a set of bleachers from an old school next door. I got to the door and walked in. They told me to remember which way to get in because there was only one. We zigzagged through hallways with two inches of broken glass on the floor and doorways blocked by old refrigerators. It was pitch dark, but flashlights guided us. We got to the top floor and it was a wreck. There were nasty junkies passed out on the floor and forty ounce bottles full of piss. This was it. I thanked them, and rolled out my sleeping bag in a far off corner.
Over the course of a week or so I made friends with some nice kids and I also met some scumbags. A couple of kids pulled me aside one night and asked me if I had ever hopped a freight train.
“Of course I have,” I said, lying through my teeth.
“Great. We’re leaving for Virginia tomorrow, you want to come?” One of them asked. The answer was obviously yes. We left at four in the morning and walked a solid five miles to the outskirts of town. We waited for a southbound train under a giant concrete bridge for two days, but we had no luck. We decided to head to another spot on the other side of town, and within minutes and train slowed down and stopped right in front of us. This was our golden opportunity, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. They all jumped on confidently, but I was shaking. I grabbed onto the giant steel beast right as it started to move again. Before I knew it, we were flying. No words could describe that feeling. I was elated, I was immortal, I was untouchable. My heart was pounding and I was grinning ear to ear. This was it. This is what I was looking for my whole life: this was the adventure my little nineteen-year-old brain had been craving.
In the morning we woke up cold and groggy. I peeked over the edge of the train car; we were stopped. The other boys roused themselves, and we all quickly realized this is not where we wanted to be. We were in the train yard, and though I didn’t know it at the time, we were in the infamous Cumberland Gap. Cumberland, Maryland is small boring town with nothing but trains that had been the bane of many vagrants over the years. We weren’t sure what to do, but we knew that needed to get out of that yard as fast as possible. At the edge of the yard, we were spotted by a worker who stared at us until we walked off the property. We stopped in the town, the locals giving us filthy looks, to gear up for the indefinite journey ahead. We wanted to head south, so we went to the south side of the train yard and waited in the woods. When we caught out after a couple of days, we soon realized why no one liked to be stuck in this town. There was a giant loop outside of town that sends people the opposite of whichever way you want to go. We wanted south; we got north.
The next day when the train stopped rolling, we got off. We were in Ohio. At this point we were cursing our luck, and didn’t think it could get much worse until we caught the next train. We were feeling pretty good, singing hobo songs and telling stories, when the train started to slow. One of the kids when to the door of the boxcar when we stopped and was greeted by half a dozen police officers, guns drawn. Apparently someone had seen us catch out and called the cops. They cuffed us and drove us to the Medina county jail. At this point, after sleeping in the woods for two weeks, it was nice to have a shower, a meal, and a bed. They didn’t really know what to do with us, so they let us out three days later. The whole experience was pretty hilarious.
Luckily, one of the kids I was with was from Youngstown, which was about an hour outside of town. His mom picked us up, and laughed with us all the way to their home. We drank and ate for few days, and they let us borrow the car to get to Virginia. Once we were in Charlottesville, we stayed at a little squat near the railroad and played music for a few days. Then I decided it was time for my adventure to end. Luckily there was some kind of festival happening that week, so the highway was flooded with hippies. I hitched one last ride back down to Raleigh, and told my hobo stories to all of my friends, their mouths gaping in disbelief. Looking back on it now, I don’t know what I was thinking, but nothing has changed me like that couple of months did. I don’t think I’ll ever hit the road that hard again, so I’m glad I did it when I could.

When I was nineteen years old, I decided that my young life needed some adventure. I was, at the time, living in Raleigh, North Carolina in a dirty two-bedroom house with a fluctuating number of room mates; usually nine or ten of them. We would host punk shows and anarchist book readings, dance parties and the occasional vagabond sleepover. On these occasions I would listen with intense jealousy to kids talk about life on the road. I always thought that some day I’d just run away with them, and I was right. In the summer of 2006 I set off on my journey from Raleigh up through Virginia to Pennsylvania, but this was no Greyhound road trip.

One of my good friends had hitchhiked before, so we had someone drive us to the border of North Carolina and Virginia and hitched the short ride up to Richmond. It was great. We met weirdos and concerned mothers who gave us rides because if it had been their children on the side of the road, they’d want someone to give them a ride. More commonly, got rides from zealots trying to convince us to turn our lives around and go with god. Once we were in Richmond, we knew a couple people and crashed on their couches, and discovered a secret tree house by the river that we slept in one night. Richmond was a party city, and at the time had the second or third highest murder rate per capita. One night we were walking through a neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. A group of young kids started following us. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, but it didn’t sound welcoming.

“918, bitch!” one of the kids yelled as a cloud of white chemical powder enveloped us. They had sprayed us with a fire extinguisher. We didn’t want trouble and knew we were in the wrong neighborhood, so we just kept walking. I heard footsteps running up behind me again. I turned around.
“All right man, really?” I said indignantly. I saw white again, but this time it was all inside my head. He had clocked me with fire extinguisher. I was disoriented, but my friend put his arm around me.
“Come on, we need to walk,” he said. My senses started to come back and I slowly started to realize what had happened. I was beyond angry, but I knew there was nothing I could do. I could hear them laughing a block away.

Later that night at a party, I was the benefactor of everyone’s sympathy, but we decided it was time to move on from Richmond. We got our stuff together and headed to Washington D.C. the next morning. Luckily we got a ride all the way there and I slept the whole way. Once in D.C. we met up with some friends at a local collective house. We spent the better part of a week helping organize protests for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. We went to the park and fed homeless people and rode bikes late at night. Things were looking up, but my friend decided he wanted to go back down south, and I wasn’t ready for the adventure to end. Standing on the on ramp at eight in the morning, I realized this would be my first time hitching alone. I got a rush of self-important confidence and a beat up green truck skidded to a halt on the side of the ramp.
“Hurry up and get in, I ain’t got a license!”
I laughed and hopped in the truck bed. He didn’t take me too far. I got another couple of rides to right outside of Baltimore. I had heard bad things about Baltimore from traveling kids, and as the hours went by standing on the side of the highway by myself, I started to get a little nervous. What was I even doing out there?
A car pulled over and I had a bad feeling. I had been told by travelers to always trust my instinct about a sketchy ride, but I was desperate.
“Where you headed?” The big fellow behind the wheel of a shiny SUV asked.
“Umm… Philly.” I said with a shaky voice.
“Well, I’m not going that far, but I can take you a few exits.”
I shook my head and got in the car.
“I just need to make a quick stop at my house, it’s the next exit,” he said. I clutched my pocketknife out of his view.
“I’d really rather stay on the highway,” I said defiantly.
“It’ll only take a minute, I swear. You could take a shower if you want.” I didn’t like where this was going, but I was basically trapped. He started to tell me his story. It Turned out he had been in my position when he was younger. He went into his house and I just waited in the car. He came out with two bags of groceries and wore a big goofy smile as he put them on my lap. We went to a drive-through and he bought me a meal. I felt bad for questioning his intentions. When he dropped me off he handed me a $20 bill in addition to all the food.
“I can’t take this, man, you’ve really helped me out,” I said, feeling ashamed.
“Listen man, it’s like a karma thing. Just take it.” He said with confidence. I took it and went on my way. I felt happy, but I was still scared. My confidence was shaken. The next ride I got was from an elementary school teacher who was going all the way to Philly.
“So… why are you doing this?” she said as politely as she could. I stayed quiet, unsure how to answer. “You know, I get it. I really do. I’ve always wanted to do that, I was just too scared.”
We got into the city right when it started to get dark. Perfect timing. I felt lucky, but that feeling quickly faded. I had never been to Philadelphia, and I knew no one. I didn’t know where to go or what to do so I wandered around trying to think of somewhere to sleep. I stashed my pack on a playground and walked until midnight or so. Eventually I just unrolled my sleeping bag at the top of the steps of an official looking building and slept with one eye open.

The next morning I was feeling refreshed, but I was still questioning why I was there. I had heard from some other traveling kids that there was a squat in West Philly called Paradise City. It was legendary. It was an eight floor abandoned apartment building, and the best part: there were cell phone towers on the roof, so the whole place had electricity. When I got to the neighborhood, it looked like a bomb had hit it. There was garbage everywhere, people slinging dope on the corner, pretty much every ghetto stereotype. I asked around and found some punk rockers who were willing to show me how to get in. They told me it was dangerous, but I was feeling invincible.

All of the doors and windows were boarded up, and the building was covered in graffiti. They took me around the back through a hole in the chain link fence under a set of bleachers from an old school next door. I got to the door and walked in. They told me to remember which way to get in because there was only one. We zigzagged through hallways with two inches of broken glass on the floor and doorways blocked by old refrigerators. It was pitch dark, but flashlights guided us. We got to the top floor and it was a wreck. There were nasty junkies passed out on the floor and forty ounce bottles full of piss. This was it. I thanked them, and rolled out my sleeping bag in a far off corner.

Over the course of a week or so I made friends with some nice kids and I also met some scumbags. A couple of kids pulled me aside one night and asked me if I had ever hopped a freight train.
“Of course I have,” I said, lying through my teeth.

“Great. We’re leaving for Virginia tomorrow, you want to come?” One of them asked. The answer was obviously yes. We left at four in the morning and walked a solid five miles to the outskirts of town. We waited for a southbound train under a giant concrete bridge for two days, but we had no luck. We decided to head to another spot on the other side of town, and within minutes and train slowed down and stopped right in front of us. This was our golden opportunity, but I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. They all jumped on confidently, but I was shaking. I grabbed onto the giant steel beast right as it started to move again. Before I knew it, we were flying. No words could describe that feeling. I was elated, I was immortal, I was untouchable. My heart was pounding and I was grinning ear to ear. This was it. This is what I was looking for my whole life: this was the adventure my little nineteen-year-old brain had been craving.

In the morning we woke up cold and groggy. I peeked over the edge of the train car; we were stopped. The other boys roused themselves, and we all quickly realized this is not where we wanted to be. We were in the train yard, and though I didn’t know it at the time, we were in the infamous Cumberland Gap. Cumberland, Maryland is small boring town with nothing but trains that had been the bane of many vagrants over the years. We weren’t sure what to do, but we knew that needed to get out of that yard as fast as possible. At the edge of the yard, we were spotted by a worker who stared at us until we walked off the property. We stopped in the town, the locals giving us filthy looks, to gear up for the indefinite journey ahead. We wanted to head south, so we went to the south side of the train yard and waited in the woods. When we caught out after a couple of days, we soon realized why no one liked to be stuck in this town. There was a giant loop outside of town that sends people the opposite of whichever way you want to go. We wanted south; we got north.

The next day when the train stopped rolling, we got off. We were in Ohio. At this point we were cursing our luck, and didn’t think it could get much worse until we caught the next train. We were feeling pretty good, singing hobo songs and telling stories, when the train started to slow. One of the kids when to the door of the boxcar when we stopped and was greeted by half a dozen police officers, guns drawn. Apparently someone had seen us catch out and called the cops. They cuffed us and drove us to the Medina county jail. At this point, after sleeping in the woods for two weeks, it was nice to have a shower, a meal, and a bed. They didn’t really know what to do with us, so they let us out three days later. The whole experience was pretty hilarious.

Luckily, one of the kids I was with was from Youngstown, which was about an hour outside of town. His mom picked us up, and laughed with us all the way to their home. We drank and ate for few days, and they let us borrow the car to get to Virginia. Once we were in Charlottesville, we stayed at a little squat near the railroad and played music for a few days. Then I decided it was time for my adventure to end. Luckily there was some kind of festival happening that week, so the highway was flooded with hippies. I hitched one last ride back down to Raleigh, and told my hobo stories to all of my friends, their mouths gaping in disbelief. Looking back on it now, I don’t know what I was thinking, but nothing has changed me like that couple of months did. I don’t think I’ll ever hit the road that hard again, so I’m glad I did it when I could.

EDIT: Whoever gave me gold thank you so much! I think this has to be the easiest way anyone has ever earned gold. I feel OP definitely deserved it more than me (I mean, obviously), but thanks so much to whoever bought me it. Redditors no longer need fear giant walls of text or poorly formatted stories. From now on, I'll be there...I'll be there whenever you need me.

As another Ohioan, I can confirm this, because the foot of snow melted in a day and it's now 65 degrees out. Tomorrow is Fall. The day after tomorrow is a mixture of both Spring and Winter. Gotta love it.

Hearing OP's story made me think of Pat the Bunny. He's off the streets now, but Pat spent a lot of time with nothing but his guitar and his thumb. He's a raw musician, but I really love his music. Its so gritty and heart-felt.

He's also known as Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains, and The Wingnut Dishwasher's Union. You should check him out.

I always wanted to go on an adventure. I want to meet lots of people and actually experience different parts of life and the country. Sadly, I know this will never happen. I really just want to get out of the loop that I call life.

I used to live in west philly around that time. Not long after you left there was a homicide at Paradise City, some guy got thrown off the roof. Philly Weekly did a big special about the place. The cops broke everything up and I think it's been empty or demolished since.

This is honestly one of the most interesting things I've ever read in my two years on Reddit. My entire life I've wanted to do what you did. Just hitting the road with no idea what to do or where to go. But I had no idea that people like that still existed. I've heard too many times about how it's impossible to truly hitchhike and train hop now-a-days, but I suppose they were wrong. What did you do for money for food and such, though? I'd hope to avoid sleeping in a junkie den for as long as possible.

Take it from me, i'm 23 years old and threw away around 6 or 7 years on drugs. I thought I was being cool since I was shy and drugs gave me the confidence I needed to be socially awesome. But then I started becoming more and more dependent, physically & mentally and ended up becoming a felon and am still trying to piece my life back together. Going to prison isn't any fun, especially for guys (assuming you're a guy) like us that grow up with every opportunity at our disposal and piss it all away. You get there and you think to yourself "Holy fuck i'm fucking stupid".

Fuck the drugs bro, life is amazing without substances that can wreak havoc on your life. If you're GF and parents are the only loved ones you really care about or have in your life, you don't want to lose them because they found out you're getting high, do you? Or that you need a drug to get out of bed in the morning. I had to flee across country a few times from LE and I wouldn't wish that lifestyle on my worst enemy. Turn back while you still can.

Stop doing opiates and start listening to the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. You might like it, you might not, just give it a chance. I know at least for me, that podcast has changed my life for the better. It helps give you a different perspective and sometimes that's just what you need.

What up. I'm gonna pretend to be smart and motivational in this post. I'm even drinking tea right now, so you can imagine I'm a badass. (I'm not.)

IF something happens out of your control that changes your whole life, it is up to you how bad it is. You said it yourself: You are in control of your own reality. I don't think you fully realize it in your life yet, but that's okay! I don't either. But we're both aware of it, and that's the first step. And I know that sounds contradictory; something out of your control happens but it's under your control. Bear with me.

Yeah, something in your life might change for the worse. Given probability, something absolutely will. A parent might die before you're ready for it. Maybe both. Maybe your family will go bankrupt. Maybe the house you love will burn to the ground, all material possessions gone.

But it doesn't matter what happens; in any case, it is up to you to find a way to stop the downward spiral which can easily overcome people in seemingly bad situations, and force it upward. To me, that's all life is; a series of good and bad events that can sway your general attitude and life to go in either direction, infinitely. But again - and most people never know this - you are in control of your own reality. So it's up to you to take a step back from your situation, your emotions, and the negative energy that's overwhelming you, and say "Okay, this has already happened; this is reality. How can I objectively help this situation? How can I push it in the right direction?"

Weak people allow their situation to become hopeless - which is not their fault. They were never taught how to do that, or they were weakened from the outside, by addictive drugs, by TV, by propaganda... You can teach yourself to become strong, to find the good and love in any situation and follow it. See, of course you don't have control over everything that can ever happen. But anything that you can affect, you can affect in any way you want. So affect it for the better.

Personally, to me it sounds like your life is pretty great, if a little boring. I can relate, actually. If you want to see 'the real world', go find it. Go down to Mexico and talk with people who've crossed the border at 3AM and risking everything just to get a fucking shitty job where they get no respect, no love, and a constant threat of jailtime. Go listen to some drug addiction groups, hear stories of people who've given parts of their brain up out of desperation, just because they don't know what they're doing anymore. Go ask a homeless person what their story is - they'll tell you, they need someone to talk to. See the people who don't know how to control their reality, so that you can understand how easy and how sad it is to become them - and how hard and worth it it is to realize that you can do anything if you do it with care.

Oh yeah, and since we're in /r/Drugs: 2-3 grams of shrooms + some chill music + Planet Earth (on mute so you can enjoy your music) + a smart sitter.

tl;dr: No matter what happens, all of life is a constant choice between acting out of fear/denial vs. acting out of love/acceptance. Choose.

Like you I was fortunate in life and found myself asking the same questions. Part of me wanted to get out but other parts enjoyed the lifestyle, the risks and the benefits drugs brought me. I continued along the same path... and here I am. I am successful by most metrics and fall a long way from the stereotype of a drug user.

Regarding the other reply though - I have a healthy distrust of opiates. They seem to be a downfall for many in the same position.

I'm not sure how someone who doesn't have to work learns to work, but that's what you have to do. Nothing good in life comes without it. Equally, if not more importantly, you need to get out into the world and interact with people, even if a lot of them are going to turn out to be assholes. Especially that. You need to experience life outside the bubble you live in. The longer you stay with mommy and daddy, not interacting with anyone outside that house, the closer you're going to be to becoming Buster Bluth.

I've partied at C-Squat a few times. I have no doubt there are worse places, but I feel like theres a special kind of nonchalance to the debauchery there. (for those who don't know, its a former crackhouse/squat/punk house in NYC that birthed the band Choking Victim/Leftover Crack among other projects, now owned legitimately after being occupied for so long). Watched a man hammer nails up his urethra in between sets of bands that were playing. 8.5/10 would drug den again.

I skated the halfpipe there years ago while traveling up North. Someone sat in the middle of the halfpipe in his underwear, screaming folk punk songs as loud as he could, while me and some other guys skated around him. 10/10 would do again

Used to go to a trailer with some friends to smoke, and the place was a complete dirtball. One bedroom was trashed and couldnt be entered, the toilets didnt work. Inches worth of burned and stained shit all over the kitchen. Knife holes in all of the walls. There was garbage everywhere, piled waist high in some places. I had to regularly pick fleas off of myself after sitting on the furniture. That bastard abused his cats, and had a half rotted dead cat on his front porch of the trailer for ages just to see if anyone would think it were real and pet it. I stopped hanging out with him soon after that, and warned all of my friends he was bad news. Later learned he stole from any house he went to, and everyone pretty much told him to stay the fuck away. Dude was a nasty parasitic human being.

I've probably lived in more drug & crack houses than anyone could imagine. The main 4 are below.

1) when I was just a young boy, I lived in Lakeport, ca. I like to call it the meth haven because all the private land and drug production that goes on up there. We lived on a ranch with 3 acres of land. I didnt know it at the time but all of the "friends" that came over were really just my mom's drug friends. Needles, weed, pipes, pills, piles of drugs were left laying around. My sister and I were too young to know what was happening. Long story short I was shot just inches away from a main artery by a cracked out friend of my mom's.

2) When my mom was running from the police we stayed in a lot of dank and shitty motels in the kelseyville area. Little food, drugs consistently throughout my child hood. The drugy friends that would meet up with her would get so fucked up that she give them my bed and id have to sleep on the floor. Sometimes theyd wake up screaming, not knowing where they were and would threaten us all. It sucked a lot.

3) This third place on union ave in San Jose, ca was the worst. My mom had a huge illegal weed crop in the backyard that she told me were tomatoes. I unknowingly helped her plant, trim, and prep the weed. Her drug friends again continued to come over - sometimes upwards of 5 - 10 at a time. Around this time my father was back In the picture and he had me steal some weed fom my mom's crop to help her get arrested. I didnt know id be sending my mom to jail.

4) the last main one was on columbine dr in San jose, ca. This was a section 8 house on the east side sj. My mom was involved with this asshole dude that brainwashed her and got her back on meth. He used my mom and stayed with us. I was too busy being an angry teenager to realize he was using her to be the middle-man for selling his shit. One night when a women he was trying to sell to was over at my house (I wasnt there) he accidentally overdosed her and killed her. He threatened my mom that he'd kill her and me if she didnt help him get rid of the body. They used my moms truck to dispose of the body somewhere in Sj. The cops eventually found out and raided the house. My mom is now in jail for 15 more years.

Not too bad, but went to visit a friend at college after not seeing each other for awhile. He got addicted to heroin and had junkie friends. He brings me from a normal, run of the mill college party to another on-campus building.

When we walk in, I notice there is no furniture. Absolutely none. No rooms had any furniture and there was nothing of any value anywhere. All the walls were spraypainted or had drugged out ramblings written on them (remember this was on-campus housing so it would eventually be inspected by the school) We go into another room and kids are just sitting on the floor against all the walls. He goes to introduce me to a girl and she just puts her hand up, limp, and groans. That was her saying, "Hi". Once he started shooting up I got weirded out and left. Luckily my cousin was on the same campus that night so I met up with him and his buddies.

ok, my friends called this place "the house of 1000 corpses". I was crashing there on the couch. it was a 2 bedroom house and the rent was insanely cheap. why you might ask? the previous tennants had been a biker gang. there were spots on the kitchen linoleum where shallow "bowls" had been carved into the floor by multiple motorcycle burnouts. there were also sections of counter and drywall, haphazardly cut out with a saw. We found out this was because these guys beat a guy to, what they thought was death, in the kitchen. then they buried him in the back yard alive, and he then died of asphyxiation. anyway, the cops came into the house and just started cutting out sections of house that had blood on them and removing them for evidence. The house burned down in a fire that almost killed me (3 months in a burn ward and had to have my lungs pumped) because one of the guys came downstairs drunk at 2am to put some wood in the wood stove and decided to clean out the ashes right then. Instead of disposing of them properly, he dumped the hot ashes into the trash can in the kitchen and promptly went back to bed. yadda yadda yadda, 3rd degree burns suck.

Most of the traps that I frequent are actually very, very ordain. Everything is done properly. There is an individual safe for every substance and smaller safe to accompany the money that goes with its correlating substance.

The pack master of the trap is very kind and humble; he would always take his monocle off and loosen his bow tie when associating with the lower level trap pawns. These low level scumbags felt very welcomed and he was manipulating them to get deeper in. But all in all, he took care of all of us.

The trap fiends that are always at the trap are very mellow. Now one is ever strung out or crazy. However once I remember walking in and they were teaching giant stuffed animals karate but that's a story for another day.

I knew this mentally ill russian-turkish guy that had an apartment with a couple inches of sand on the fucking floor. It was like a giant ashtray and everybody would spit/throw their trash/butts on the ground with no complaints from him. The guy lived near central station and would stand outside shouting at people- one time we were there with a couple of people and he was either jonesing really bad or somehow trying to impress, anyhoo he bashed a hole in his wall and packed himself a bowl of that isolation stuff, smoked it right in front of us...

Oddly enough, it was in a neighborhood right next to a Holiday Inn. Went with a boyfriend in highschool, it was his cousin's friend's whatever's house. Buncha toothless teenagers sitting on moldy sofas. Ended up smoking a green-water bong and listening to them play the electric guitar. Not the worst date I've ever been on, but a pretty jarring atmosphere.

I had a buddy in school who lived in this dilapidated house. He was the youngest child out of 4, and grew up with his siblings partying hard, the cops knew the place and would stop by on occasions where more cars where in the driveway than normal. He didn't have a back door, and people would just come and go. I remember the first time I seen his place, it was painted white back in the 50s, the floor was covered in trash to the point you would feel your feet sink down. I never took my shoes off. He had this little dog, whose belly would drag the ground because she was so fat, she would also shit everywhere. One time he cleaned and I swear to god two days later it looked like he never did. I remember seeing the floor, it was green wood and would squish when you walked, seeping out moisture from your body weight. I remember one time he was short on money and wanted some weed, so I drove him up to the pawn shop with two beat up looking speakers. Pawn shop had nice guitars on the wall, musical equipment everywhere and over all nice things. We walk in and immediately the guy tells us to get out like we are some crack heads, I don't blame him though, we probably did look shady. He had a house party one time, and like 20 people showed up. They came into the house(rich kids) looked around, and walked right outside and left, it was sad because I could hear them talking shit about him, he did too... but what the fuck right? I talk to ol' dude from time to time, he is living on his own now with a room mate and doing well.

The first time I ever tripped acid I was taken to a ranch. The man who owned the ranch has been arrested since then, but even before that this man scared me. He ran a very large businesses, growing and making different types of drugs. He was so rich he never had to work a day in his life. He enjoyed being suspended from hooks by his back and getting his dick sucked whilst doing so. He also had enough money to do so, whenever but he had to wait for his scabs on his back to heal before he could try again. His house was in a very secluded area after a mile long driveway which included armed guards and locked gates. The house wasn't very big but it had lots of lasers and speaker equipment. There were multiple large boxes filled with empty whipit containers. His fridge only had bowls filled with LSD, and one pizza. I was allowed to eat that pizza. I don't know how to accuratly describe how scary this man is; but I've once brought his name up and multiple people also fear him. I'm actually too afraid to go into detail about his house in fear of my own safety.

I don't expect OP to reveal the guy's name, but it sounds like it could have been Pickard's associate Gordon Todd Skinner. Pickard, by all accounts I've read, was not that crazy, just a chemist. Skinner, however, was crazy as shit. Tortured people, distributed sketchy drugs, ratted out Pickard in exchange for immunity, etc. The part about 'running multiple businesses' and having tons of speakers and lasers fits the bill almost perfectly if you read up on this guy. Also, he was later arrested and is now serving life in prison. Plus, the fact that LSD was involved seems to confirm this. There's just not that many acid chemists out there.

close-knit groups who supply most of the nation's "acid" in the belief that it fosters enlightenment.

He was severely fucked in the head and would get angry at people for apologizing. There were empty bullet cases lying around near the entrance of his house, and we later shot and exploded random shit while tripping.

Me and a mate had a long drive the next morning of a party, in a completely different city about 20 hours from home, and we were just going to camp out in a park somewhere when "that guy" of the party offered to let us stay at his. This guy was quite a character.

He had spent the entire party spinning shit and wigging out and was one of the most shadiest people I had ever met. But he said he could get us more weed and could smoke his house down, so we said fuck it why not. We later learned a friend who was at the party and had stayed there before knew what we were in for but didn't want to be "mean" to him. Fuck I got angry...

First thing he does is pick up his dealer from his house, who no fucking shit looked like The Joker. (Heath Ledger.) And then takes us to his house. This "house" was a fucking mess. No furniture except for stained armchairs, piled high with junk and garbage. Garbage all over the floor, "You guys can sleep there" He says as he points to a patch of floor with a pizza box and dirty clothes. I pulled my mate aside and said "Let's just smoke ourselves asleep and fuck off early."

We have one cone when the guy, the only guy we knew there as we now had a group of dole bludging stoners who heard free weed pour out of every room in the house, leaves and doesn't come back for the rest of the night exept for right at the end, after having to smoke pot with fucking idiots. When we are trying to get to sleep, while my head was right in view of the front door. Which they never closed, I went to sleep it was open, I woke up it was open. And while we try to sleep the guy comes back, asks where we are and says "Don't worry they're are cool." Not ten minutes later "Dude, I have always wanted to kill some strangers. We should burn this house down with these two guys in it!" Fucking worst. sleep. ever.

The one and only time I ever tried crack, a buddy and me had a juicy bag of weed, and decided to top off our bowl with some of those yellow crack rocks.

I had tried Cocaine before. It felt good, but I didn't get the appeal. I was about 20 at the time. I loved weed (and still do).

Well anyway, on the way back from my buddies dealers house where he scored a 40$ bag of crack, he put every bit of it on top of a fresh packed bowl of weed. We were walking back to his house when he decided to show me a "homeless spot" where he'd go down with a few sandwhiches and talk to the homeless people for hours sometimes. Under this bridge on a highway, there was a drainage pipe that apparently never got too wet. We couped up in there for a while and blazed that entire bag.

My face got numb, but that's about it. I didnt see the appeal of crack either!

But down in that damn drainage pipe, there were like new-age heiroglyphics. You couldn't tell what the medium was really - spraypaint, blood in places, dead rats. It didn't smell bad like I expected it to. You could feel the vibrations of the cars travelling overhead, and after catching a nice buzz, that was a pretty wild sensation indeed.

It was fun times!

TL;DR: In a drainage pipe under a highway bridge where a load of homeless guys hang out. + Good time :D

I live in a small town, in the 417 area. Winters bone is about my home town. We have a trailer park called country ghettos thats pretty rough. You drive through and see blinds going up and down from tweakers looking out, pit bulls on chains, stuff like that.. i once went there for some reason or another, and the next day some cracked out dude came up to me asking for acid because my car was there and then someone had acid so he assumed I was the source... it was unnerving to know they watched that close.

Edit: also I basically lived at a friends that was a party house. I felt safe but to an outsider the satanic blood art on the walls, and the myriad of straws razors and bongs was probably terrifying ..

My fav was being at a bar called "The tunnel" that nobody went to for any other reason than to score, and having a shriveled ole hag of about 34 squat-crawl out of the girls' can with her pants around her knees holding a small rat baby cooing "OMG! Look what just fell out of the ceiling into my lap while I was taking a shit!".

The front door is just a screen door, and in sticker letters above it it says "KNCK BEFOR ENTERING"

When ever I drive by, and turn down the road it sits at the corner of, the people outside always give me these sketchy, hateful looks.

I am familiar with 2 of the people who frequent the house, because they're always on my corner heckling me for "50 cents for the bus". A few months before I moved in there was a murder there, and it's not uncommon for someone to OD over there. Sirens come down our road at least thrice a month.

What bothers me about it is that children live right next door. School busses come down this road every day, and for the most part, the people in the CH keep to themselves, but a lot of time they're out in the yard and on the porch being loud and rowdy, and trying to start trouble with each other.

So, I guess compared to the others, it's very tame, but for someone who has never actually been in the vicinity of, nor seen a crack house, it's a very shocking thing for me.

The way these people look is terrible. They look like they're rotting. Just yesterday one of the women was bothering me for 50 cents I don't even have right now. I've been eating day old bread from work for the past few days. "BUT I NEED 50 CENTS".

Trust me, I do too, and not for what you need it for, unfortunately.

I know it's not my place to judge, but the one time I did give her change, she didn't even thank me, and ended up going to the C store to get a 40.

Fuck man, don't lie to me. If you want it for booze or drugs just say so.

I'm not going to make a throwaway i'll just put the worst crack houses i've been to, actually the only ones i've been too. One was a guy who had gotten a $450,000 settlement and was in the process of blowing it, mad crack dealers (and crack heads) coming by all day and night, he'd turn porn on and the girls there smoking always were down to fuck, not bad looking either, just heads. Dirty ass house, no food, had a kid but I used to do my best to keep his kid out of the living room/bed room.

The second was a old black dude who was in a wheelchair. When I first went there, I was like damn, his dad don't give a fuck if we get high here? Then the dope gets there and he's smoking more than anyone. His nephew was also the bigger crack dealer in my town. Always MAD people there all hours of the night, I used to see people drop $1,000-$2,000 on crack in one night and then do it again the next day. Fucking insane, I had to leave those houses, those motherfuckers were nuts.

I was once in a house in North Camden, with no heat, no furniture, no electric, no running water, and filth everywhere. When it rained outside, it rained inside. If you needed to go to the bathroom, you needed to go to a neighbor's house, a store, or an alleyway. The lady that lived there was a crack head, random people would come in and out all day. It was really unpleasant to be there. The entire neighborhood near 8th and Vine was just completely decayed.

A house where my middle man lived. She and her boyfriend lived in this run down house, that looked normal enough on the out side, but once you came inside shit was fucked. The room you came into, a living room, had the dry wall knocked out of it, and the floor was warped to hell and back. In the kitchen a sinkhole had opened up and caved in most of it, you had to be very careful going into her room. Somehow, her room was fine, but she always offered me the room that was open to crash for the night which looked like some one had been murdered in there. I always assumed the walls were stained with mud, but could have been blood or anything. the carpet in that room was only down in small sections, and the rest didn't even have the concrete underneath, it was just straight to the crawlspace underneath her house. I never took her up on her offer. There were 2 more rooms i never saw, because I didn't like spending time in there, but I imagine they were pretty bad.

My old neighbors across the hall were tweakers... Dude would always have something he was working on, old computers torn apart and forgotten all over the living room. 30" old as fuck console TV, big ass wooden thing- doesn't work. Stacked on top of that, another, newer, 30" TV that also doesn't work. On top of that one was a 13" black and white with rabbit ears. One day I go over to score a bowl, and dude has a rock of tweak I swear that was as big as my fist, just on what looked to be a communion plate, on his floor. His floor.... the kitchen area was covered in at least three inches of layered newspaper. The rest of the apartment had at least one layer of carpet extra over the original. Dude would go get 'clean' carpet that was being replaced in other units and layer his floor. The apartments had full size sliding doors, this was blocked by a floor to ceiling terrarium collection. There was at least one fish tank going, too. Only one or two of the terrariums had creatures, a snake and a lizard of some sort. One day, dude's stove stops working. Dude pushes it out of the apartment so the maintenance guy can fix it. I came home to the guy arguing with dude over whether or not he could troubleshoot the stove in the breezeway.

Having always had a job working in run down properties one of the worst I have seen had mold growing on the walls, a three foot pile of decomposed feces in the bathroom, flies everywhere, rubbish molded into seating in the living room with a battered PlayStation with 4 games and needles, roach ends and blood in various locations. Discarded growing apparatus in a bedroom with holes in walls where fans used to be as well as a lot of manly pots with what can only be described as thick tar all over them.the wallpaper was all peeled, door had been visibly kicked in a few times and the windows were either broken or non existing. This was 23 stories up in a tower block.

It wasn't terrible, but I went with a friend a while ago while he was buying some weed. We walk in and it's just a black guy on crutches in a furniture-bare living room. Littered around the floor are bags of weed and babies. They all seemed pretty content...

I can think of a few, but I'll talk about this one particular afterparty house I went to.

First of all, it's a house, with a yard, porch, garage... looks normal enough outside. Enter to a large living room with stained couches, horrible floor, and amongst all of the garbage was twenty something Carlo Rossi bottles. A party rages on, I need some bud, they're like "Go in that room, ask them!"

I enter a small, quiet room, with psychedelic posters and the like, as I see six or seven people puddled on the floor. I probably asked where the weed was at, because they said "Shh! DMT" or something. Sorry for being a buzz kill, guys. I left, and met some dude with a fanny pack full of MDMA in the living room. He said his buddy probably has some.

We go in another room on the other side of the house, no joke, this room was pretty large, and there's four or five people, basically nodded out on couches. There was a young looking girl sitting on the floor and a big freaky old dude patting her head. One other guy looked passed out, maybe he was dead, I don't know, but his shorts showed that his legs were starting to decay, maybe from shooting up so much, maybe they were lesions from AIDS, I don't know, I got pretty freaked out and got out of there. MDMA guy couldn't find his friend anyway, so we went back into the living room, where they were guzzling another bottle of Carlo, singing songs and falling around on eachother.

Next thing I know some kid comes busting through the door, holding a half empty rack of beer, saying he just ran from the cops after giving them his I.D. People quickly ushered him out the back of the house and up a steep hill. A few others went that way as well, including MDMA guy.

Knock Knock goes the door and the party is mostly quiet. One guy, this memorable psycho creature with two different colored eyes and thought processes that couldn't possibly be from earth, goes to greet the cops. I'll spare most of the riffraff, but this guy was preventing the police from entering the house, saying things like "I don't give a fuck, this is my house, get off my property" which I thought was insane, but they ended up leaving, and I did too, shortly after.